Garden Salad

Mustard greens and bok choy with baby romaine and dandelion, all from my garden!

Mustard flower

The mustard greens I planted in the fall are the first non-weeds to flower in my garden this year.

The first color of spring

Our forsythia bushes have started to bloom this week!

Breaking ground

This week, the weather was beautiful and my parents were in town to baby-sit, so I got out in the garden for the first time this year.  I gave the area I gardened last year a good once-over, turning the soil and doing some weeding.  I also started to break up some of the adjacent ground, since I'm planning on expanding this year.  The picture above is part of my new expanded garden.  This is where I've planted peas.  I've never tried peas before and I don't think I bought enough.  I  planted all 91 seeds separately, but that probably won't even satisfy my baby, much less his parents.

Yesterday, I also got to work inside my established garden.  I planted the first wave of carrots, lambsquarters, arugula and beetberry.  Some parsley seems to have barely survived the winter, with only about an inch of growth above ground.  The ones I pulled up had extensive root systems, though, so I've left some in the ground, hoping that they will recover and do well this year.

First work of the year

On Monday, I got out to the garden for the first time this spring.  I didn't do much, but just a few things that I had neglected in the fall.  As you can see in the picture above, I weeded the garlic.  I also uprooted some dead annuals and trimmed dead growth off of some perennials. 

Seeds ordered!

I finally got around to ordering my seeds.  I need to start my seedlings inside and my cool-weather crops outside as early as next week, so hopefully they will be shipped speedily.

Ultimately, I would like to save my seeds so that I don't have to order any.  I've started working on this, but I still have a lot to learn.  As you can see in the picture above, I've saved a number of seeds from last year.  From top to bottom, I have okra, jalapeno, butternut squash and marigold.  I've also saved some dill seeds.  I didn't save any tomato seeds.  I had hoped to keep some clones alive all winter, but none of them have survived.  It worked last year, but maybe two winters in a row was too much to ask of the same plants.

Today, I ordered seeds I've used before and some new ones that I've never tried.  I got some of the same tomatoes I grew last year, called Peacevine.  They're a tasty cherry variety that usually clones very well.  Last year, I cut the suckers off and put them straight into the ground and they survived.  With other varieties, I've had to keep them inside until the roots developed.  I also ordered a slicing tomato I've never tried, called Peron Sprayless.  I also got the same type of carrots I grew last year, but a different type of Bok Choi.  I wasn't confident in being able to save either of those seeds yet.

I didn't grow chamomile or cilantro last year because they didn't self-seed like I had expected them to, so I ordered both of those for this year.  I also got some parsley, since mine didn't survive the heavy snow.  They usually do, so they must not have been strong enough before the winter.  I also ordered some cayenne pepper.  Recent acquisition of a food dehydrator has led me to plan to grow a lot of cayenne, since I'll be able to dry them quickly. 

The rest of the seeds I ordered are things I've never tried to grow.  My young son is just starting to eat solid foods and he seems to really like peas, so I ordered some to grow for him.  I'm also going to try growing chia, which is a type of salvia with edible and highly nutritious seeds.  The rest of the plants I'll be trying for the first time are different types of salads.  I ordered an edible marigold, arugula, a purple lambsquarters and something called beetberry, the leaves and fruit of which can be used in salads.  Lambquarters is an edible weed that dominated my last garden, but that I haven't seen in this new garden.  These, like the herbs I'm growing, should all self-seed.

I ordered all of these seeds from an organic seed company called Seeds of Change.  I ordered one other seed packet from a different company, called Horizon Herbs, and that is the African piri piri pepper, also called African bird pepper.  This is a pepper I knew in Tanzania and is supposed to not cross-pollinate with my jalapenos.